Quick Hard drive and DVD SATA drive question.

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maximus01701

n00b
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Apr 25, 2008
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Ok, so i would like to have 4 SATA hard drives in raid 0 and 1 SATA DVD drive.

So in order to do so, i hooked all 4 hard drives up to my mobo, and the sata DVD drive
to a PCI raid controller card.

But right now, i am able to boot into windows and all, go to my computer and see the
DVD drive, BUT i am unable to read/burn/what ev. with the drive. (BUT I am able to eject the drive.)

I have tried updating ALL of the drivers, weather they where for the raid controller card, DVD drive or my MOBO. But still nothing...

Also, i am unable to boot from the drive.. (But can see it in the BIOS when it POSTS).


So am I on the right track for hooking up 4 SATA hard drives and 1 SATA DVD drive...
And also... what do you think the next step should be in troubleshooting this prob?



-Thanks, Cheers
 
Is the DVD drive SATA setting to IDE or something else. I think they pretty much all have to be IDE.
 
What do you mean...
In the bios, when it posts that does it appear as SATA or IDE?
(Is that what you mean)?

IIRC i believe it is recognized as SATA.

If it is suppose to be IDE, how do i change it.


-Thanks
 
In the BIOS, there's a setting for the SATA controller. Exactly what kind of setting depends on the controller/MB combination.

Some controllers will have IDE, AHCI and RAID as options. Others will have something like Auto, Combined, Enhanced etc. The latter may refer to PATA mode instead of IDE mode. Check with your MB manual for details.

Basically, IDE mode reduces the SATA drive to its most basic functionality.
 
I did see those options in my MB raid settings, but i have not seen them for my controller card. (but i will take a look again).

My comps specs are as fallows:

Ga-Ma69GM-s2H
Corsair vx550W
AMD 6000+
EVGA 8800 GT
2 gigs ram
4 Sata Hard drives
1 Sata DVD drive
Rosewill RC-209-ex Raid controller card.

Thanks for all the help guys!
 
Can you set the card to JBOD? I had to do so on my on-board ports. After that, it has worked like a charm. Note: this was only necessary for the NF4-controlled ports. The additional Realtek ports on my board worked as is (as I discovered later). Just a possibility.
 
I have been e-mailing Rosewill back and forth about the problem. And this is how it has gone...

THEM:
We apologize for the late reply. Please download the latest 64-bit SATARAID5 driver ver. 1.5.15.0 from the link below. And then update the motherboard BIOS to try again.

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=28&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=8&

Me: The drivers i am currently running now... are newer then the ones you have sent me... But i have tried both and still nothing....

Is there a way i can set the card to JBOD, or IDE view or something along those lines... ( I don't want to use raid, ONLY a DVD drive, running with
my on board raid controller card).

-Thanks,

Them:
Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Rosewill.

We apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused you.

If there is no contents can be read from the CD/DVD drive connected to RC-209-EX, we would suggest you update your motherboard BIOS.

Please also note You can set different RAID arrays to the SATA hard drives attached to RC-209-EX. But if there is no hard drive attached, there is no setting about the card itself. That is to say, if you only connect optical drive to the card, there is no way to set the card to JBOD, or any other modes.

Thank you.
 
Do you need to have the DVD drive on an external card? When I was considering a RAID array in a server, I was told I could put four drives on the controller in an array, and use one of the two remaining SATA ports for an optical drive without issue. This was on an Intel chipset.
 
Well, this is what i have going for me...

I have 4 hard drives and 1 sata DVD drive. (So thats 5 things total).

The raid card has 4 ports, and my mobo has 4 ports.

I have read things stating PCI raid controler cards don't tend to be as fast as
as onboard cards. And because i need the speed more for the hard drives, then
i do the DVD drive. That is why i put the 4 hard drives on the board and the 1 DVD
drive on the card...
 
In that case, I'd probably ditch the SATA optical drive and spend the $30 on an IDE version.
 
lol, it has crossed my mind...

(but in theory... this SHOULD work..)

I see it in the bios. and in windows...

Just cant read anything off of it.
 
Am i right in assuming,

That, that PCI card is slow with raid then my integrated mother board raid controller card?
 
If the onboard controller is on the same PCI bus, then they're equal. PCI bandwidth is too slow for a RAID card, IMO.
 
shouldn't the DVD be plugged right into the mobo, and the 4 HDDs into the PCI card?

Why is your DVD plugged into the PCI raid controller?
 
maximus01701 said:
Am i right in assuming,

That, that PCI card is slower with raid then my integrated mother board raid controller card?
Click to expand...

Because i have read, that the PCI raid is slower then the on board mobo raid...

and because i need the speed more with the hard drives then i do the DVD drive...
i have plugged them into the mobo.
 
The tech support did not mention it but perhaps they have more than one version of the firware for the card.

I have a SiI 3132 based SATA Raid controller card (PCI express 1x). I had to load a special non-raid firmware on the card to get things working as desired.

See if there is more than one type of firmware available for you card.
 
Yea, i talked with tech support about it all. (About what i was trying today), and to be honest, they were not much help... He just gave me a link to some older firmware (which i tried). But still didn't work.


How many people here are doing what i am trying to do?

onboard-4 HD Raid
with
PCI raid controller- DVD/cd drive

If so, what card and board are you using?
 
I was only able to get mine to work using on board ports. I never could get mine (Plextor or Samsung) to work on a RAID card. It was quite frustrating and actually caused me to buy a new MoBo with more SATA's.
 
It could be that the card doesn't support (S)ATAPI, which is what CD/DVD drives use, versus (S)ATA for normal hard drives. They probably don't figure people would use a DVD drive on a raid card.

If so, you are SOL unless they can release this feature via firmware.
 
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